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This website covers knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, amongst other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.

Apr 20 Knowledge and iPod

Andy Boyd draws an interesting parallel between his record collection and (personal) knowledge management. Croeso: iPoding my Music

This is a parallel to my experience with databases for archive material (aka Knowledge Bases). It's amazing what we forget even if we have written it down, and we tend to only search when we think there is something to be found. So if we forgotten how will we be encouraged to search?

This comment goes a couple of direction for me. How will I know to search for something if I don't know that thing exists? I'll only run across it in random walks through my collection -- or on full inventories.

The next step is how will I find something if I search for it with different terms than how it is stored? Like I am looking for that Robert Fripp album, but I have forgotten that it was Andy Summers and Robert Fripp. This is my frustration with software makers who write help documentation under the assumption that you know how they refer to the features. (If I knew what they were called, I wouldn't be digging around in the "help" file.)

And when we add other people into the mix, this gets more interesting. How will the new hire even know where to start -- do they ask their neighbor, the local "expert," the training group? Do they know that there is a service out on the intranet that will help them? And the long-timers -- do they know where (and how) to look when that piece of information they rely on changes?

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This blog is about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.